The entrepreneur’s path is challenging and exciting. It requires your full commitment and a sincere desire to scale business as you evolve too. It is a continuous process of stepping beyond your own limits and bringing innovation for the world to see.
The moment when you start feeling your limits often means that you are close to your individual breakthrough and business growth. Business scaling begins with scaling yourself. The more inner obstacles you are overcoming, the more likely your idea will blossom in something genuinely innovative. It is one of the startup essentials.
The biggest challenge is to define the right moment for taking action leading to efficient business scaling, growth marketing, and creating a successful product. The challenge is to move forward, driven by your true entrepreneurial feeling, and not to misstep.
Beyond traditional approaches to business scaling, there are some emotional and psychological symptoms saying that you, as an entrepreneur, are ready to expand your business or incorporate innovation. Here we are going to talk about five of them. Of course, analytical thinking is crucial, however, many successful entrepreneurs are also talking about more subtle signs of your readiness to startup evolution.
The Five Feelings that Mean You are Ready for Scaling and Innovation
The Five Feelings that Mean You are Ready for Scaling and Innovation Image credit: pexels
DISSATISFACTION. Do you feel dissatisfied with the actual business processes since they don’t work for the company’s success anymore?
You might have a well-established algorithm of what to do to engage new customers, deliver exceptional quality, and efficiently run internal corporate processes. However, as the number of customers, workload, and requirements are growing, the company’s structure and strategy need to be rethought.
The old patterns stop working for your big ideas and goals. A business needs new professionals in a team, new approaches, and new opportunities for growth. The usual state of things does not satisfy you as a business owner anymore. It is the first sign that your venture should be scaled soon.
“Think of [business scaling] like driving a car. Once you reach a certain speed, the gear that got you there will not get you to the next level of speed. You need to shift gears. If you don’t, your engine will burn out.” – Daniel Marcos, Co-Founder and CEO of Growth Institute
RESISTANCE. Do you feel the inner resistance to getting rid of old patterns?
Before making a decision to incorporate innovation into your business processes or to scale them, you may start thinking that the old patterns are not so bad as they have seemed previously. “I can continue running my business in this way in the couple next years, nothing bad will happen.” However, it may.
Missing the right moment and opportunity to run a business transformation, you waste your company’s time and ability to evolve faster. The opportunity that is given but not used may lead to the most unexpected outcomes for your business. This money could be saved if I took the risk at that moment. That company could become our client if we hired more area-specific professionals. And so on
“The lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.” ? Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
RESISTANCE. Do you feel the inner resistance to getting rid of old patterns? Image credit: pexels
IMPOSSIBILITY. No, this shift is impossible for our company
Yes, it seems impossible. However, was Steve Jobs thinking that the first personal computer is impossible to create? The feeling of impossibility fuels real innovation. A lamp can’t shine without any visible source of energy. The modular lighting panels can’t be stuck together on the wall without glue — those lights maybe not. But your light — may be. Think out of the box.
The ability to go beyond your own limits allows you to do the impossible things and bring innovation for others too.
“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” – Walt Disney
FEAR. Are you afraid of making incorrect decisions and facing failures?
You will definitely make them. Probably, you will make them even more than you might expect, and it is normal. Innovation requires you to experiment and make mistakes. The path to the sky-rocket business success is made up of the mistakes, experiences, and the right conclusions.
Your team may conduct in-depth product research and investigate all your competitor’s tactics. However, you are not insured against failures. You must be ready to make as many mistakes as needed to refine the market-ready product or scale business less stressfully.
Fear creates only an illusion that failure is equal to possible death. Actually, it only looks like this, but it is not fatal. We are born to succeed as well as to fail, make the right conclusions, and achieve even larger success in the future.
“From my experience, transitioning from a small business (10-30 employees) to a middle-sized company (50-100 employees) is the most stressful. Your thoughts are messing around questions, like “How to hire all these people?” or “How to control the quality and delivery process in the growing company?”
After this point is overcome, business scaling happens less stressfully. You stop overthinking about coming problems; you just try to solve them. Later, you pass over other business scaling phases easier by following a particular algorithm based on your own experience or experience of people who are smarter than you. Particularly, I would recommend the book “How To Solve The Mismanagement Crisis: Diagnosis and Treatment of Management Problems.” – Dima Venglinski, Founder and CEO of Fireart Studio
You might hear a saying that laziness drives innovation. However, fear drives it even more effectively. The idea that evokes the biggest fear inside of you is likely a perfect point for your inner upgrade. It pushes you to come out of particular frames and help the rest of the world do the same using your products or services.
VULNERABILITY. Are you afraid of being ashamed and vulnerable in the eyes of your customers and employees?
“If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.” – Seth Godin, Entrepreneur, Author
An entrepreneur is like a phoenix. Phoenix never dies but revives again and again. Stand up and stand out. Real innovation also means a real risk, the likeability to fail and appear to be completely vulnerable to financial issues and a bad reputation. However, modern business needs more art and innovation. They are worth risk-taking.
“Work hard and never give up. Don’t believe anybody who claims that it’s easy to do something really valuable. Success is not magic but hard work. Good things take time and effort to happen. All successive entrepreneurs who I know are hard-working people with the incredible ability to revive after plenty of failures.” – Dima Venglinski, Founder and CEO of Fireart Studio
It is not about making impulsive decisions that implicate taking ill-considered risks. Of course, each step in an unbeatable business strategy needs refinement, analysis, and probably in-depth research conducted by a professional team. Here, we are talking about moving away from conservative industrialism and stepping closer to innovation.
It can be a shining and promising opportunity for success and breakthrough (not only yours but your prospective customers’ too). However, it may also be scary in its beauty and unreachability. It may irritate your eyes with its amazing shine and allure with stepping into a completely new experience.
Dana Kachan is an author and marketing strategist. Implementing digital marketing for businesses across various industries, she also loves to share insights about marketing, growth hacking, entrepreneurship, product design and development, and emerging technologies in her articles.
